Quote Originally Posted by rabernet View Post
Very interesting, and thank you for sharing! I did want to make one point about this poll. I would hazard a guess that MOST of the members here haven't been keeping ball pythons for very long, so "only" 27% of the respondents probably isn't an accurate representation of the life expectancy of our captive ball pythons.

Basically, the target audience of just this forum skews the results to the oldest being on the younger end (percentage-wise), simply because such a large number of our members (including myself) haven't been keeping ball pythons long enough to have any much older than 5 years. I've raised all but 2 or 3 of my animals from babies, and I got my first ball python in 2005. I do have a couple females that I acquired as adults who were pet store surrenders with no historical back-ground, so I don't know how old they were before they came into my collection.

This was also very interesting for me personally after listening to Tom Wolfe on Reptile Radio and his feeding methods (which was to pound food into his animals - basically feed them every time they were hungry), I was considering changing up my feeding methods for my girls that are in this year's breeding plans.

After reading this, I'm re-evaluating. I currently feed small rats to all of my adults, 1 a week. Even that may be too much if this LJ is any indication.
I hear what you are saying about the age of the balls/their owners. I've only been collecting balls for 18 months and from the get go I've been reading about feeding babies every 3 days, then every 5-7 days, then as adults every 10-14 days.

Is this too much?....

I believe that feeding babies/juveniles more regularly is important to give them their start in life, but at what point do we slow down and adopt a longer break between feeding?

I've got a spider male that is 9 months old and weighs almost 800g, he will eat everytime I put food in front of him, now I cannot but think that he has been overfed. I don't believe that the view 'feed them if they will eat' is good for the animal and may result in causing more harm than good. A dog will eat at any opportunity it gets ( well mine will at least ) and end up obese.

Perhaps when we encounter a ball's 'hunger strike' it is telling us that we have gone too far and we need to give it months (not weeks) before trying to feed again. Perhaps....

Some people will feed their animals to get them up to breeding weight as quick as possible, but at what price? Sure you may get females to breed at their second winter but is it a good idea if you are halving the lifespan of the animal?

I'm interested in hearing from owners that have had balls a long time as I believe their input would be of value. Balls can live to over 40 years and I want to know how these animals are cared for when it comes to feeding....

Ball pythons are still relatively new in the grand scheme of things, especially when you consider the age they can go to. As depicted by that poll, the majority of owners may have had balls for about 5 years (or have ball that are 5 years old) ... most of those balls are still considered young....



BTW - What is a LJ?